Rural Ontario Family ‘Grateful’ For SpaceX’s Starlink Internet

With SpaceX recently opening up Starlink satellite internet beta sign ups for everyone, more rural Canadians are rejoicing after getting connected to high speed service.

“I feel lucky that we could afford to get the service”, said Darren Boss. “I feel pretty grateful to have this opportunity.”

Boss and his wife, who moved from Ottawa to just outside Perth, Ontario, three years ago, are among the countless living in rural Canada who either don’t have access to internet at all or have connection speed and reliability problems.

The couple’s problems were only remedied when they decided to sign up for the Starlink beta. Despite having to pay $800 CAD for the Starlink hardware and $150 CAD per month after taxes for the internet service, Boss and his wife couldn’t be happier with their decision, reports CBC.

The Boss family works from home in the field of IT, so slow, unreliable internet connections are an especially pesky problem.

Before Starlink came to their rescue, each of them had to limit their bandwidth usage and even schedule work meetings at non-conflicting times to have the best connection possible.

“I changed the way I did some of my job just because of how slow the upload speeds were and now I don’t have to make those compromises anymore”, added Boss.

It wasn’t even about throwing money at the problem — Darren and the missus tried several providers in their area, only to be met with the same shoddy, slow service.

In fact, to North Grenville, Ontario, Mayor Nancy Peckford’s disappointment, recent tests revealed that broadband services in the area were only equipped to provide speeds significantly “below the CRTC minimum rate” of 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload for broadband services.

While Canadian telcos are working on bringing high-speed internet to more of rural Canada, it doesn’t look to be their biggest priority at the moment.

With speeds that far surpass the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s stipulated minimums (and much more horsepower on the way), SpaceX’s Starlink internet service could be a revelation for rural Canadians.

Click here to sign up for Starlink internet and its beta program.

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